( Very possibly my new favorite Boland poem )
Okay, so I know much of her thing is that she is both a woman and poet. That's what 250+ pages of prose in Object Lessons boils down to, as do many, many poems. And yet I think I only understood that intellectually, because the aspects of womanhood she most often writes about are sexuality, motherhood, and domestic chores related to raising children. She writes about various activities that aren't necessarily gender-coded, either by biology or social convention, as well, but the poems that are most obviously about her identity as a female tend to cluster around those three areas. None of which, as you might guess, I can really relate to all that well, although I think she treats them beautfully.
And then there's this. Quilting is not biologically restricted only to females, true, but it's very socially coded as a feminine activity. And here I can see her, quite vividly, sitting cross-legged on a dining room floor, sorting patches of fabric. I can see myself doing that. (Okay, I don't quilt, but I have in the past done artsy-crafty things like quilting that required laying out materials on a floor.) And suddenly I go, "Oh. She is like me. We share this. We can make those same motions and see those same patterns." She had written about my experience of being human, of being a writer, of being interested in poetry; until now, I had not run into a poem where she captured part of my experience of being female.
I don't know if that makes sense as written. But I hope this little epiphany translates into some progress on the thesis...
Okay, so I know much of her thing is that she is both a woman and poet. That's what 250+ pages of prose in Object Lessons boils down to, as do many, many poems. And yet I think I only understood that intellectually, because the aspects of womanhood she most often writes about are sexuality, motherhood, and domestic chores related to raising children. She writes about various activities that aren't necessarily gender-coded, either by biology or social convention, as well, but the poems that are most obviously about her identity as a female tend to cluster around those three areas. None of which, as you might guess, I can really relate to all that well, although I think she treats them beautfully.
And then there's this. Quilting is not biologically restricted only to females, true, but it's very socially coded as a feminine activity. And here I can see her, quite vividly, sitting cross-legged on a dining room floor, sorting patches of fabric. I can see myself doing that. (Okay, I don't quilt, but I have in the past done artsy-crafty things like quilting that required laying out materials on a floor.) And suddenly I go, "Oh. She is like me. We share this. We can make those same motions and see those same patterns." She had written about my experience of being human, of being a writer, of being interested in poetry; until now, I had not run into a poem where she captured part of my experience of being female.
I don't know if that makes sense as written. But I hope this little epiphany translates into some progress on the thesis...
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